


the never-ending story

by cakecakecake



Category: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fairy Tale Style, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 09:56:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19809910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakecakecake/pseuds/cakecakecake
Summary: "if you're looking for a way to save him, i'm afraid you cannot put your faith in a fairy tale."(she's afraid it's all she has left.)





	the never-ending story

Gebel used to tell her stories. 

Stories of spiraling towers and monsters under staircases, of fallen knights and guardian angels. He’d read to her all the tales of haunted fortresses and wicked witches, of princesses in glass coffins and an eternal sleep that only a kiss of true love could wake them from. 

There were never people like her in these stories, no one with shards of crystals on their backs or in their hearts. The special things these children had were blessings, miracles that would make flowers grow or rid the weary of sickness -- nothing like what Miriam had. The shards of violet and sapphire sparkling at her throat and on her thighs were curses, destined for evil-doings and destruction. 

She was not blessed, not a guardian angel -- not a princess. The power that made her special was borne of darkness, of greed and cruelty. She was not a hero, so of course she couldn’t save him. When her burning tears drip down the curvatures of his nacreous cheeks, they do not glow with holy light, they do not melt the crystal. They just fall, rolling down his scarlet neck and onto the velvet carpet. 

(Gebel is not a princess, and yet here he lies sleeping, his own body a coffin of glass.) 

He cannot hear her, but she cries. There’s little crying for him will do, but it’s all that she has strength for. He cannot hear her, but she tells him, “I’ve missed you, too,” even though it’s too late. 

“Miriam…”

She reaches a trembling hand to clutch the one now at rest on her shoulder. Johannes whispers comfort in her ear, tangles calloused fingers through her hair. He has no wings, yet he has flown to her side. Ever-present, his warmth a welcome relief, however small. Always there when he’s needed. 

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she weeps. She thinks she can feel the bits of crystal in her heart breaking more with every beat. “I didn’t get to say…” 

(Johannes is not a guardian angel, and yet his arms around her are a shield of light.) 

She stays like that, sobbing in his tight embrace, until she decides. She has a new promise to keep -- one that she can’t stand to be broken. 

She turns over the waystone in her clutches and hands it to Johannes. “Take him back to the village. I know what I have to do.” 

*

(There were children in the stories, orphan children like her, all alone, but they would always find their families in the end. She draws her sword and thinks of them as she strikes down wicked beasts and sinister monsters. She will not end up alone.) 

*

Johannes gives her a memento, something of his to keep with her -- his glasses. She peers through the lenses in hopes of seeing something she couldn’t already. With Zangetsu gone and Alfred slain, she feels blinded. Miriam heaves a sigh.

“Do you remember Snow White?”

“Of course. It was his favorite,” he says fondly.

“How much of it do you think is real?”

Johannes takes pause, gentle smile faltering. “If you’re looking for a way to save him, I’m afraid you cannot put your faith in a fairy tale.”

(She’s afraid it’s all she has left.) 

*

The Moon is a goddess in all the stories she remembers. In her story, she's just another monster. This Moon who is a monster has dimension-shifting powers, waning into the vacuum of space. Miriam must chase her, the monster who took Gebel from her, who broke him apart and shattered him like a mirror, reflecting back the wrong image. 

The Moon had unmade him, and now she has unmade Her. 

\-- but all is still lost. Zangetsu does not reappear and Alfred does not revive. Dominique does not repent for her sins.

\-- and Gebel does not wake, not even when she presses her soft lips to his fractured simulacrum. 

“Was it not enough?” she wonders.

If the witch dies, the spell will be broken -- that’s what the stories have told her. But if Gremory is not the witch -- 

The librarian of the castle folds his hands under his chin, peering up at her with yellowed eyes. He reaches for her hand from across the bureau and he’s cold, so very cold to the touch. 

“Every fantasy takes root in a truth. All you have to do is find it.” 

(Orlok Dracule is a vampire, but within his heart burns fiery human compassion.)

*

She looks to Johannes when it’s all over. 

When it’s all over -- when the wretched king of Solomon is slain and the woman who betrayed her is laid to rest, she looks to him. She asks the vampire she calls a friend to escape when she spills twilight on the altar of the unholy cathedral. The beastly dragons are slaughtered and hellish archdemons are banished. Ghostly quiet falls upon the crumbling walls of the Hellhold and Miriam wonders if it feels fear, if it knows it’s going to be swallowed up by an abyss of Light. 

The man who is not a guardian angel is bathed in a Heavenly glow as he speaks through his fingers. Language that she doesn’t understand reaches her ears, speaking into her very soul as she’s dazzled by sanctified spirits. She shuts her eyes and for a fleeting moment, she thinks she’s fallen asleep again. 

She opens them to see the walls of the craftroom, Johannes smiling proudly down at her, haloed by an amber sunrise. “You did it,” he tells her.

“We did it,” she corrects him.

*

If a hero makes a promise, that promise is never broken.

Come Hell or high water, promises are kept -- that’s how the story goes. A hero’s promise never fails.

Though a whole village of people would argue, Miriam is not a hero. People make promises to each other every day, and nobody really keeps them. To no fault of their own, people fail to follow through. Miriam holds nothing against these people, but she will not be one of them. 

The vampire who is her friend -- who asks to be called OD -- watches her climb the steps to the sanctuary. 

“Have you found your truth?”

She has, but she will not tell him. She will only smile, and that will be enough. She locks the door behind her. 

*

Miriam pulls back the curtain hiding the coffin of glass. The opalescent effigy of the man she has loved all her life still does not seem real -- an impossible imitation, a figment of her darkest imagination. But here he lies still sleeping, immaculate and pure, stardust frozen around his once-warm flesh. 

She climbs up the pedestal and holds his frigid face in her hands. With a whisper she tells him that she’s kept her promise, and presses her lips against his frosted mouth once again. 

(There’s a splintering sound, like a stone hitting a window, and then -- )

“...Miriam?” 

The air leaves her lungs -- she catches falling stars from his outstretched palms and fluttering lashes. There is no thunderous shattering of glass -- only the shimmering ashes of prismatic conjury falling away as the man who is not a princess lifts his head. 

(Miriam is not a hero, and yet she loves Gebel enough to make fairy tales come true.) 

She starts to breathe again -- his name is all she can say. He reaches to cradle her face, swiping a thumb across her cheek. There will be no more tears. 

“I love you, Miriam,” he tells her, and she knows of nothing else that could be as true. “I have always loved you.” 

“I love you, Gebel,” she says, though she doesn’t need to -- she’s kept the promise to prove it -- but saying it aloud makes her heart grow wings. Hearing it has done the same to him, it seems -- there’s a fluttering under her palm as he holds her hands to his chest -- 

Stories have told her what a kiss feels like. Choirs of angels and exultant fanfares resound as the world starts to spin faster on its axis, leaving you weak in the knees and jelly-boned as a fire burns hot in the pit of your heart -- none of which happens, of course. But none of that compares to the all-consuming wave of heat that crashes through her when Gebel’s lips caress her own. 

Petal-soft and honey-sweet, his lips mold into hers as though they’d been crafted just for this. He tastes of something musky and saltine, something that could only be described as Him, like biting into a foreign fruit for the first time. Miriam would lose herself in his kiss, forgetting all else but the way she drowns in his taste and his embrace. They stay like that for what would be hours, coiled together like the twin dragons locked in the tower until the evening sun would meet the sea. 

“What did Snow White do once the prince woke her up?” 

Gebel gives her a knowing smirk. “She rode off on a white horse and lived happily ever after.”

“But what happens in happily-ever-after?” the not-a-hero asks the love of her life. 

The stories have always ended there, at this uncertain after-ever. For them, there is no enchanted horse-drawn carriage waiting outside, and no castle for them to be swept off to -- only the rubble of a desolate village, and the broken hearts of the people who scraped by. 

Hand in hers, the man who is not a princess rises to his feet. 

“I suppose we’ll have to find out for ourselves.” 

*

It would be later in her life that Miriam would find out why the stories never told the ever-after. Later, when the vampire’s library is pillaged by bandits, when tomes of forbidden sorcery are bargained for and sold into dubious hands. When villages across the English border are destroyed, and whispers of the return of the Cursed Moon reach her ears, she knows.

She straps a leather pouch around her waist and plucks the Blue Rose from the garden. With apologies to Johannes, she kisses a girl who is not her daughter goodbye. Little Anne -- who now, is not so little anymore -- slips faerie medicine and a waystone into her purse and tells her to come home in one piece. 

(Miriam is not a mother, though many children would come to call her so.)

“I’ll be fine,” she tells her not-a-daughter, and Anne smiles back without the crease of worry on her brow.

The man who is not her father pulls her close against him. The bits of magi-crystals that never left his face glimmer in the light of the rising Moon. He asks her to make one more promise -- her most important one yet. He pulls a ring from the pockets of his vest and Miriam’s mouth falls open.

“Come back to me.” 

And she would. 

She would slice open the Moon once again, break down the walls of another castle. Hell opens its ugly mouth to her and she spits in it. As the sun will rise and set on another catastrophe, she remembers the stories -- the difference between true life and fairy tales -- 

Life has no end. Evil is never truly vanquished -- it lurks in the shadows, hiding until the trees have shed their leaves. Like a phoenix in a fire, it will rise from the ashes and scourge our God’s green earth again and again -- but so long as there are good people, evil can be conquered. 

(There are no heroes in this story. 

There are spiraling towers and monsters under staircases, fallen knights and guardian angels -- a haunted fortress and a wicked witch and a coffin made of glass. There are wizards and disguises and broken hearts and broken trust, and the King of Kings in Hell is brought to mercy. But there are no heroes. There is only a woman, an orphan child all alone, and all she has is her faith and her fire. She is given a curse, borne of darkness and greed, made for evil-doings and destruction. She is not a hero, but she is led by truth and by love, and because she kept her promise, the Light has reached God’s green earth again.) 

Miriam returns home, back to the girl who is not her daughter and the vampire librarian and the man who is not a guardian angel. The man who is not a princess places a ring on her finger, and they make one more promise to each other. 

(Miriam is not a hero and Life has no ending, but she would have her happily-ever-after.)

**Author's Note:**

> i needed something to heal my broken heart after gebel's true fate.


End file.
